Space Brains: The "Observer Effect" and Quantum Theology

The Star Larvae Hypothesis
Nature's Plan for Humankind
Part 3. Space Brains

The "Observer Effect" and Quantum Theology

Resolving the proton crisis through oneiric intent—the universe heals itself through its will to live.

Think you're Bright? Rise and Shine at http://starlarvae.blogspot.com/

The prospective culmination of the evolution of human consciousness in a technologically mediated state of lucid dreaming introduces the prospect of human industry culminating in the automated manufacturing of protons through an application of the Observer Effect of quantum mechanics to Hawking radiation.

Whew.

Physicist Fred Alan Wolf proposes that the dream state and quantum mechanics have a certain special relationship. The dream state. according to Wolf, is one in which experience is in a meaningful way nearer than in ordinary waking consciousness to the indeterminate state of quantum superposition. Building on the work of neurologists and dream researchers, Wolf proposes that the identity, or self, of human psychology evolves out of the indeterminate, ambiguous, experiences of the dream state, that preconscious mental processing involves neural structures that compare quantum states in the brain and construct a particular self awareness from among the superposed possibilities. The process parallels that by which empirical events condense out of quantum superpositions in the world at large.

The collapse of the state vector into an actual event and the collapse of the indeterminate experience of the dream (preconscious) state into an actual occasion of self perception are concomitant. The process he describes in his book "The Dreaming Universe" is that of a reduction of multiple possibilities into a particularized experience of selfhood. Gravitational self-collapse of the quantum superposition occurs when the quantum of subjectivity attains a magnitude that corresponds to, or causes, it to perceive itself. This is the subjective correlate or manifestation of the collapse of the quantum indeterminacy to a locus of mass. The process that locates mass also locates consciousness (subjectivity). The two occurrences are simultaneous.

Wolf's model recalls the philosophy of Alfred North Whitehead, who proposed that the actual entities that compose this universe have simultaneously an objective and a subjective nature. He specifically used the language of subjectivity to describe the process by which actual events issue from indeterminacy. In Whitehead’s philosophy an actual event occurs through the concrescence of "prehensions" into a "satisfaction" of feeling. He called his philosophy the "philosophy of organism" as a way to capture the simultaneity of objectivity and subjectivity in the process of actual events occurring. Unfortunately, Whitehead's followers adopted the term "process philosophy" instead of "philosophy of organism" and thereby marginalized an intended implication of Whitehead's thought.

The star larvae hypothesis adds a layer of conjecture to this already highly speculative construction. It proposes that the dream state, and specifically the lucid dream state, has a particular efficacy in terms of the observer effect of quantum mechanics, in which human intent can affect the outcome of quantum mechanical processes. In other words, the lucid dream is that brand of consciousness most adept at influencing quantum events through intent.

"Self-determining objects, such as man, with a spark of freedom and creativity in them, are also in part self-limiting, and in choosing their own limits, they also choose what the limits of God as knowing them shall be. In deciding to do this, not that, I decide that God shall know me as actually doing this, and not know me as actually doing that. I decide the content of the divine knowledge."

—- Charles Hartshorne
The Divine Relativity

As a result, it is the state of mind best suited for conjuring protons from the quantum fluctuations that permeate spacetime and that produce Hawking radiation when they occur near black holes. Wolf goes so far as to suggest that just as the specific events of the physical world precipitate out of the range of possibilities presented in quantum indeterminacy and participate collectively in a physical universe at large, so too do the many psychological selves that precipitate out of the range of possibilities presented in the dream state participate collectively in a mental or experiential metaphysical universe at large, a notion essentially theological. It suggests the generalized notion from many traditions of a transcendent Cosmic Mind, or God.

A kind of quantum theology has grown also from the work of Penrose and Hameroff. Leveraging their work, astrophysicist Paola Zizzi proposes that the earliest moments of the Big Bang constituted a state in which the mass of the entire universe-to-be was for a brief moment superposed in a quantum indeterminacy. This state of superposition corresponds to what is called the inflationary phase of the early universe, a phase of very rapid expansion which has become a standard feature of the Big Bang cosmology. Zizzi proposes that this primordial indeterminacy collapsed in an objective reduction that would have been accompanied by an instance of universally comprehensive subjectivity, or what Stuart Hameroff calls "the Big Wow." The theological dimensions of this idea are stark and staggering. Zizzi explains her phenomenological interpretation of the Big Bang at http://arxiv.org/abs/gr-qc/0007006.

"If human reason seems to discredit known religious forms, what ensues is not a sober rational appraisal of merely human factors accepted as such. What ensues is Lenin worship, party worship, state worship, self-worship, despair, sensuality, or some other vagary. The proper reaction to this apparent fact is not necessarily the advocacy of a 'return to religion,' meaning by that to a religion whose deficiencies were the very reason why men of the highest integrity and wisdom felt dissatisfied with it, and which is deeply entangled in vested interests. What we need is to make a renewed attempt to worship the objective God, not our forefathers’ doctrines about him."

—- Charles Hartshorne
The Divine Relativity

Whitehead's philosophy includes a theology that relates to all of these ideas. In it God has three natures: a primordial nature in which God is a thaumaturge and which seems to correlate with Zizzi's phenomenological interpretation of inflationary cosmology. God's second nature, his consequent nature, is in process of becoming and corresponds to the actual evolution of the physical universe, including the subjective experiences of organisms that precipitate out of the range of possibilities. Once these events occur, they are knowable and become data in God's memory. God's third nature is superjective and is the nudge that God gives the universe to move in the direction of the good. The "nudge" takes the form of a lure to do good, which is felt by actual events in the process of their concrescence.

Grand historiographic systems, such as Whitehead's, constitute what in academic theory has come to be called "metanarrative." The term refers to an overarching organizing concept that bestows a plot to the events of history. Examples include

Marxism, in which history is a competition among social classes
Analytic psychology (Freud), in which history is competition between civilization and its discontents (the repressed drives of the Id)
Darwinism, in which (natural) history is a competition among species, and individuals, for material resources
The Enlightenment, in which history is a competition between scientific rationalism and religious superstition
Christianity, in which history is a competition between God and Satan
. . . and so on.

Deconstructive and postmodern academic theorists generally dismiss metanarratives in favor of more anarchic/ironic approaches to historical events.

The star larvae hypothesis is a blatant metanarrative in which history is a competition between novelty and habit, but which subordinates all events to the ontogenetic life cycle of the universe. The grand narrative plot is, admittedly, religious. It includes such hallmarks of religion as an unfolding of events that serves cosmic purposes, a mass ascendance from the Earth, and the transcendence of the fleshly condition. However, unlike religious narratives, this plot requires the participation of science. It enlists science to do what science does best, namely to articulate principles that describe the behaviors of matter and energy in ways that engineers can use to solve problems. The deepest yearnings of the religious sensibility indeed show the way. But only the ingenuity and applied reason of science can satisfy those yearnings.

Astrotheology_Jacob's Extraterrestrial Dream as seen by William Blake

Astrotheology_Narada-Brahma, Hindu vision of solarization

"According to this doctrine [of oriental eschatologies related to Chaldean astrology] the soul returned to heaven after death, to live there among the divine stars. While it remained on earth it was subject to all the bitter necessities of a destiny determined by the revolutions of the stars; but when it ascended into the upper regions, it escaped that fate and even the limits of time; it shared in the immortality of the sidereal gods that surrounded it. In the opinion of some, the soul was attracted by the rays of the sun, and after passing through the moon, where it was purified, it lost itself in the shining star of day. Another more purely astrological theory, that was undoubtedly a development of the former, taught that the soul descended to earth from the heights of heaven by passing through the spheres of the seven planets. During its passage it acquired the dispositions and qualities proper to each planet. After death it returned to its original abode by the same route. To get from one sphere to another, it had to pass a door guarded by a commandant. Only the souls of initiates knew the password that made those incorruptible guardians yield, and under the conduct of a psychopompus they ascended safely from zone to zone. As the soul rose it divested itself of the passions and qualities it acquired on its descent to the earth as though they were garments, and, free from sensuality, it penetrated into the eighth heaven to enjoy everlasting happiness as a subtle essence."

—- Franz Cumont
Oriental Religions in Roman Paganism

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